


Sleep-talking

by garlicbug



Category: Invisible Inc. (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Snippet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 02:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5230715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garlicbug/pseuds/garlicbug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sharp gives his old colleague some advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep-talking

Xu had thought Sharp was sleeping—recharging? No, enough of his brain remained that he would need sleep, same as anyone else. He pulled his headphones down to his neck and glanced at Sharp’s bunk. “Did you say something?”

Sharp laid on his back with his hands entwined on his chest, like an metal effigy, but his eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. “I said, don’t follow me.”

“Follow you where, precisely?”

“Don’t try to walk in my footsteps.” Sharp’s mouth moved oddly slow, as if he were an old robot reciting an audio file. Perhaps he was sleep-talking. “You are simply too weak.”

“I admit that I’m curious.” Xu tapped his keyboard idly. “But I work well enough as a human, for now.”

“Exactly. You’re just a man with an abacus. The machine devours meat.”

Xu stopped tapping. The laptop flashed compiler errors. Violins hummed through his headphones from the past, faint and distant.

“As long as you have any affinity with your humanity, when they take it, you will lose your mind,” Sharp whispered. “Or your life.” His artificial eye focused on Xu, red irises spinning in the cold darkness. “That would be… a waste.”

“Of course.” Xu rubbed the chill out of his forearms, and gave the face of the future a genial smile. “I’m more useful to you alive, aren’t I?”

Sharp snorted, the most human sound he could make and one Xu was much more familiar with. He closed his eyes and muttered, “Don’t be so presumptuous.”

Xu turned off the music and worked in silence, but Sharp said nothing else for the rest of the night, awake or asleep.


End file.
